Elder Tale Online Discussion
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I personally found the application process and the depth of information to absorb too onerous to give the game a fair shake. This being said, those I interacted with on the help channel were earnest and motivated. The real problem was me in the end.
Happy to see an original content game still thriving!
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@Pyrephox
This is very helpful input, thank you!We recently had an influx of newbies, which might help some of the concerns in regards to the older dungeons. But we’ll look at other ways to perhaps incentivizing this.
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@Istus
Was there a particular part of the application process & information you found particularly hard to absorb? Was the timeline too hard to understand perhaps, or were you having trouble finding all the information you felt you needed to make a character? I’d love to learn more.Original creator of SceneSys
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T Tez forked this topic on
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@Mercutio said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:
@Pyrephox
This is very helpful input, thank you!We recently had an influx of newbies, which might help some of the concerns in regards to the older dungeons. But we’ll look at other ways to perhaps incentivizing this.
I enjoyed my time there, and think it’s a great game with friendly people. And I really would love people to look at the way you guys do the dungeons-in-a-box and your mechanics. Some fantastic stuff there. Congrats on grabbing newbies!
I think, if you’re brainstorming, being able to have a ‘practice duel bot’ or ‘practice dungeon’ might help people become comfortable with understanding how to use their cards in each instance without having to “bother” another player to suffer through their attempts to figure out strategies and such. Something that you can do solo, that might not have any IC benefits, but just lets a player play around with different deck builds in a duel/dungeon situation.
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@Pyrephox Hmm. I think a Practice Dungeon is definitely possible. A practice Duel Bot would be far more difficult. Better documentation on the card battle system is on the way though, in lieu of that.
@Tez & @Third-Eye A hard to forget instance, but I’d love to focus on the game if that’s okay, and not give that guy any more thought.
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I tried to get into this game, but it felt like it had a high barrier of entry. I got lost on the website rather quickly, and never even managed to log in.
It’s possible that it’s just not a game for me. I’ve heard nothing but positivity from people who have managed to start playing.
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org -
Am I entirely blind or does the website not list what code base they use? I could very much be blind, as I often miss things.
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@icanbeyourmuse Looks like MUX or Penn, just from looking at their command syntax. Not 100% sure, though.
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@Mercutio I do not have particularly constructive suggestions to offer as I was cycling through games at the time in an effort to find a new home so I do not recall many details. The only reason I piped up is I wanted to mention that even though I did not go all the way, my experience was a positive one. With that preface out of the way…
I am pretty new to these games and my attention span maybe isn’t the same as most of the community. I think at a high level, my problems mostly hinged on my disillusionment with writing backgrounds and filling in these massive personality quizzes that never come up beyond getting in the door past whatever gate staff has erected.
I do not have a specific desire to spend hours detailing my childhood, creating a dozen memories of varying gravity, and digging through a Codex just to get a feel for things in a game that I may or may not enjoy. I also did not know anyone on the game. The desire to invest so much time piecing together things just was not there.
I have never had my background have any meaningful impact on a game unless I instigated it and at that point whether or not the hook I drop is in some staff set field on my bit is immaterial. The purpose of these fields, aside from the ones that are obviously there to define what my faction is or whatever mechanics underpin the rollplay part of the game, is not apparent to me. I get that the application process is a filter of sorts but a broad strokes overview is likely just as effective at gauging my ability to roleplay in a sane way as a granular recounting of every major event of my character’s formative years.
I would like to see, in all games, the barrier to getting started drop as low as possible. This could result in limited power, or a restricted involvement in things until more concrete decisions are made, but it at least would encourage me to see the value in completing a big application in the future once I am more invested.
TLDR: I’m lazy and either need an extrinsic reward to invest the time or understand the value of each field in an application when it comes to my future roleplay.
Feel free to prod me on any point of this rant. It’s probably not particularly articulate and it is not specific to just Elder Tale.
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I’m guessing Penn, as Mercutio’s SceneSys is for Penn.
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Are you Mercutio of ye olden days back when The Storyteller’s Circle was still around? I remember him being a good dude.
the entity previously known as Sunny
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@Istus
They’re fair points. A lot of the history of MU*dom has garnered ways to do application processes, and it’s not often questioned why certain factors are done.I’ll just touch on a few items though.
Personality Quiz - we added the Bartle test to help define what Relics you obtain and get a quick idea of the character. As well as helping make sure you end up in the right guild and all that. Help make sure with placement. Background wise, personality is a paragraph - we know it’ll likely change - but it filters out people applying for psychopaths (which doesn’t happen often, but happens more often than we’d like).
Background - we largely are making sure the theme files were read so that the player has a similar ‘understanding of the world’ as the others. Factors like the Viruses that occurred in the background flavor a lot of their experiences and their viewpoints on things, and alliance alignment.
Memories - we actually use these as bargain chips. They serve more purposes than on the face-of-it writing more background. Basically, to ensure there is a factor to ‘dying’ within the MMORPG Isekai genre, the character loses memories. This would influence the character’s personality, and creates a sense of ‘there are only so many times you can really go around getting yourself killed’.
Codex - hard to search through to get what you are looking for - recognized and something we should look at. But most of the important info is just on the website at this point. Beyond that, the codex tracks secret info you might know post-approval. And is largely used as a medium of sharing information with others and garner a sense of discovery.
Edit: Updated on the site & in the application room, so there’s a better understanding of their values.
Original creator of SceneSys
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@IoleRae I am afraid that may be a different Mercutio. I fear I am not familiar with Storyteller, beyond that the system exists.
@Roz, @Pavel, @icanbeyourmuse - this is indeed PennMUSH.
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@Jumpscare I’d love to learn more. I admit it’s not the lowest barrier of entry game, but there may be factors that as admin we are blind to here.
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@Mercutio Noting that somewhere on the website could help a bit with the comments about it having a difficult entrance bar. Adding a ‘at a glance’ page for people might help too. I just lightly glanced the website so I can’t really comment on anything beyond general. I might look at it more in depth later on, as I have said on other posts, I like to try out games advertised even if it is not necessarily something I am into.
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@icanbeyourmuse said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:
@Mercutio Noting that somewhere on the website could help a bit with the comments about it having a difficult entrance bar.
What does the ‘that’ in this sentence refer to? Just for clarity.
@icanbeyourmuse said in Elder Tale Online Discussion:
Adding a ‘at a glance’ page for people might help too.
I’ll see what I can do. We have a Premise page on the wiki, but what are the important touch factors you believe must exist? No rush of course. I’d just love to learn.
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@Mercutio Including these points in the application would be helpful. I would also include examples so that I can get excited and engaged with the ideas and thus more motivated to slog through this.
Picking the Memory item at random here: What might happen if I lose a memory? Am I aware that I have lost a memory? Is the memory lost random? Provide a made up scenario like: Sarah likes puppies because she had one as a kid. After dying, she lost that memory and instead of being happy and excited when it comes to interacting with cute animals, they just make her sad now and she can not explain exactly why.
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@Mercutio Woops! Brain blank. That you are using Penn. The code base being used tends to be a factor for a lot of people. IT also gives them an idea of what to expect.
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@Istus I’ll look into documenting this more closely!
To give a direct answer, let’s say that the memory is that she had puppies, and that made her happy. Let’s now assume as an extension, they likely adopted an animal in the Isekai world because they remind her of her puppy.
Losing that memory may make Sarah still like the animal, but no longer understand exactly why the animal makes her so happy. Maybe it deteriorates the bond, maybe it doesn’t - that’s something entirely within the player’s hands.
It is important to note that it is the player’s choice which memory they lose, when they lose one as a result of actions.
Edit: Memory files in Application have been updated to expand documentation on this.
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@icanbeyourmuse
I was not aware this was an important information point. That’s easily documented, and I’ll do that right now!Edit: Completed.
